Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/21

Rh having existed prior to landing. If the present entrance inspection was reinforced by a determined administration of these deportation laws, and if all cases whose exclusion the law makes mandatory, and which are now certified by the medical officers, were actually excluded, there would be little cause for complaint. But such a condition does not obtain. The medical officers have nothing whatever to do in passing judgment on whether an immigrant shall be admitted or not. Their province alone is to certify to his physical and mental status. The question of admission, as well as of deportation, rests with the officials of the Department of Commerce and Labor.

Much easier is the control of organic physical diseases, as, for example, hookworm infection. A survey of the prevalence of hookworm disease throughout the world, made by the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission, shows that this infection belts the world in a zone 66° wide with the equator near its middle, and that practically every country in this zone is heavily infected. It is evident how grave a danger lurks in immigration from any country where the hookworm is prevalent. Among the worst afflicted countries is India, where it is estimated that from 60 to 80 per cent, of the population of 300,000,000 harbor this parasite. This leads peculiar interest to the movement of Hindu coolies into the United States in the last few years. A shipload of these coolies landing recently in San Francisco were found by the health authorities of that port to have 90 per cent, infected with hookworm.